Tips on Learning Japanese

Started by GunSaberSeraph October 31st, 2008 5:56 PM
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  • 17 replies

GunSaberSeraph

Durandal of the Devic Era

Male
Seen December 30th, 2016
Posted December 21st, 2016
1,484 posts
15.6 Years
Lately, i've grown upset that my some of my favorite games aren't being translated into english, so instead of just sitting around and complaining until someone makes a patch for them, I decided to take an initiative and start learning Japanese. I figured some people on PC would have an idea on how to get started, and some stuff I might need to know.

Any help is greatly appriciated.

Ichikool

D/P Lover

Age 31
Female
NY
Seen February 26th, 2018
Posted March 19th, 2014
1,217 posts
18.2 Years
I'm sure there's lots of helpful computer programs out there that would be helpful if you want to learn Japanese. I haven't seen any around, but I heard learning the language is really hard to learn. But, I've never tried to myself so I wouldn't really know. If you're gonna give it a shot, I wish ya the best of luck!
Male
a small little town in so. cal
Seen September 29th, 2009
Posted September 29th, 2009
55 posts
14.7 Years
There are three different types of spelling for japanese wording

Hiragana for native japanese words

Katakana for foregin words (i.e. coffee)

and romanji for the phonetic spelling of words (i.e. 'tsu')

thats all i know
Akina says this to everyone who was complaining about Endless Eight...

"....you think YOU had it bad? KyoAni had to reanimate everything eight times, and the cast had to go through all of it over 15,000 times, so we were lucky..."

Alakazam17

Long time no see!

Female
Canada
Seen October 27th, 2020
Posted October 24th, 2020
5,639 posts
17.7 Years
I have found that it is nearly impossible to learn a language over the Internet. So when I decided I wanted to learn Japanese, I went to my university and bought the Japanese textbook. I'm not taking the class though, just reading the book. What I like about the book so far is that it lists the letters one by one, and gives an easy/crazy way to remember it.

For example, the hiragana letter "ku" looks like this: く

In the book, it gave a picture of a coukoo bird, with the く as the beak. It looked a little crazy to me at first, but I managed to learn all of the hiragana letters within two days. ^^
Seen September 18th, 2020
Posted February 18th, 2018
7,741 posts
16.6 Years
There are three different types of spelling for japanese wording

Hiragana for native japanese words

Katakana for foregin words (i.e. coffee)

and romanji for the phonetic spelling of words (i.e. 'tsu')

thats all i know
There are five I know of, and they're called writing systems, and romanji/rōmaji is just the word for the romanisation of Japanese.



Now, GunSaberSeraph, the rest of my post concerns you:
Kanji — Japan decided it'd steal Chinese symbols at some point in history. A good start would be learning the "most common 2000 kanji used in newspapers" as they are known. Yes, seriously, two bloody thousand at bare minimum. Reading names is what will stump you good and hard, but just remember the Japanese are still learning how to read this stuff in grade 9. xD

Man'yōgana — Chinese symbols used for their sounds rather than meaning, eventually turned into short-form-like writing, becoming hiragana and katakana. Completely obsolete (like the English thorn letter :B), learning it will only make you able to read really old manuscripts, which is not what you're learning Japanese for. xD

Hentaigana — Archaic writing system in the same or a similar league as hiragana and katakana. Don't worry about this one, it's rarely used even in Japan, definitely never in its games.

Hiragana — Just your bog standard writing, but Japanese.

Katakana — Easiest one to read and write (in my opinion), usually used for writing foreign words.

Laugh at hentaigana if you must.
Wikipedia has very useful tables of hiragana and katakana, it'd be best to master those first. Many simpler games like Pokemon only use these two systems (or even only one of them). Wikipedia also has some learning resources at the bottom of the pages, I think.

GunSaberSeraph

Durandal of the Devic Era

Male
Seen December 30th, 2016
Posted December 21st, 2016
1,484 posts
15.6 Years
There are five I know of, and they're called writing systems, and romanji/rōmaji is just the word for the romanisation of Japanese.



Now, GunSaberSeraph, the rest of my post concerns you:
Kanji — Japan decided it'd steal Chinese symbols at some point in history. A good start would be learning the "most common 2000 kanji used in newspapers" as they are known. Yes, seriously, two bloody thousand at bare minimum. Reading names is what will stump you good and hard, but just remember the Japanese are still learning how to read this stuff in grade 9. xD

Man'yōgana — Chinese symbols used for their sounds rather than meaning, eventually turned into short-form-like writing, becoming hiragana and katakana. Completely obsolete (like the English thorn letter :B), learning it will only make you able to read really old manuscripts, which is not what you're learning Japanese for. xD

Hentaigana — Archaic writing system in the same or a similar league as hiragana and katakana. Don't worry about this one, it's rarely used even in Japan, definitely never in its games.

Hiragana — Just your bog standard writing, but Japanese.

Katakana — Easiest one to read and write (in my opinion), usually used for writing foreign words.

Laugh at hentaigana if you must.
Wikipedia has very useful tables of hiragana and katakana, it'd be best to master those first. Many simpler games like Pokemon only use these two systems (or even only one of them). Wikipedia also has some learning resources at the bottom of the pages, I think.
Okay, so I should start at Hiragana and Katakana. Thanks for the tips Cassino. And.. teehee... hentaigana...

digi-kun

Hourai NEET

Age 33
Male
Seen March 12th, 2018
Posted July 12th, 2016
4,638 posts
19.3 Years
besides getting actual words down, you're really going to need to find somewhere where you can learn how their grammar system works. Granted it IS possible to figure it out via listening/reading enough (piecing stuff together, in other words), it's much easier to learn from somewhere/one who actually teaches Japanese.
Male
Las Vegas,Nevada.
Seen November 26th, 2021
Posted April 1st, 2011
287 posts
14.9 Years
I don't think it's as hard as everybody says it is.I'm Japanese 1 and the only 'hard' part was memorizing the hiragana.
Brother-BHwolfgang
You should ask yourself this....
Would YOU want to see a Machoke without pants on....
Sometimes, it is best not to ask questions.

digi-kun

Hourai NEET

Age 33
Male
Seen March 12th, 2018
Posted July 12th, 2016
4,638 posts
19.3 Years
bleh, better off just learning otherwise since we're probably assuming that he doesn't have money to throw around.
but ya, as Casty said, Japanese is one of the easiest languages grammar-wise, mostly because everything's actually organized into the sentences, making it extremely easy to point out things like the subject, adjectives, direct objects, etc.
Age 34
Neo America
Seen February 28th, 2009
Posted February 28th, 2009
357 posts
15.2 Years
Yeah... Japanese 1 is easy because you don't actually learn much grammar. In my Japanese 1 class, I learn hiragana, katakana, and some basic kanji, and learned how to say simple sentences (very formal sentences). I thinkk the hardest thing to do in learning a language is learning it's grammar, which starts out simple, but eventually gets complicated because it doesn't follow the same type of grammar your own language has.

Definitely start with memorizing hiragana/katakana (they're the same sounds, each hiragana letter has a coresponding katakana letter) because once you're able to read everything, translating is a lot easier. I think one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is vocabulary. You need to just burn a bunch of japanese words for things into your head. And it's not just ringo means apple, or else when you hear a word you're going to translate word by word in your head when some one speaks japanese to you. You have to think in japanese. I hold and apple and think ringo, or say dame da to a bad situation. That's the hard part for me, letting go of what i know in enlgish to understand it as japanese.

Also make sure you get your pronunciation right, or else it's going to be weird when someone else speaks to you in japanese. Buying a text book is a good idea, but it takes a long while before you can memorize enough kanji, vocabulary, and grammar to actually read something in videogames (unless it's a kids game like pokemon which uses basic japanese).

My final word of advice is not to travel up this river alone, a class would definitely help you out a lot. Just getting to know the basics of grammar and the 3 alphabets (Hiragana, katakana, and kanji) is really important and hard to do on your own. Good luck.

Help me finish my pokedex legitly:
http://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?p=3385323#post3385323


Just waiting for Arcues
Guatemala
Seen November 12th, 2008
Posted November 9th, 2008
17 posts
14.6 Years
I'm doind the same thing as you, I began to practive/learn Japanese because of the games, but since I don't have too much time to go to college or some other place to learn the language, I get myself this amazing program called The Rosetta Stone with this program you're able to learn the language the same way you did it with your native language. Is really cool and helpful, if you can, give it a try. I'm just at the firsts lessons and is really basic (dog, cat, coffe, girl, boy, etc.) and it really works, slowly but works.

Mika

もえじゃないも

Female
Seen February 11th, 2013
Posted June 11th, 2011
1,034 posts
17.5 Years
ごんばてください![Please try your hardest!]

If you're going to teach yourself, I seriously recommend Genki. :3 You can get it from the Japan Times Website and it's not horrendously expensive. It has a good balance of grammer points etc to go thru plus it has a listening CD. It's a college level book and one of the characters is a pedophile [Darn you Robert...] but it has so much good in it.

Also, find yourself a せんぱい [sempai] to talk with or send little essays to have them checked.

I myself took 4 years of Japanese and after this year, I'll be getting a BA in Japanese. <3 so you can ask me if you want but I'm sure you can find somebody else too.

Speak it. :x You'll hinder yourself if you just read and write it and by not speaking it, when you try and speak it you might say it wrong and the japanese people will call you a silly gaijin. :<

If you can afford it, [as it's bloody expensive] Rosetta Stone is a good program but it's no replacement for an actual class. I know I got lucky, with my highschool offering it, but if you are serious about learning it, looking online for an online Japanese class or when you look at colleges, make that a factor when you go look at them. ^^

Lastly, learn your katakana and hiragana and then, asap, start learning Kanji. Many games, like Pokemon, are written in hiragana/katakana with basic kanji because of the target age group but more complicated games will have up to 3k kanji you'll need to know. :3 It seems insane and in a way it is but Kanji makes your life SO much easier when trying to read. T3T I only know about 2k and I can barely read anything..... みなさん〜いしょうに日本語を勉強しましょうね?[let's study Japanese together, kay?]
Seen November 18th, 2012
Posted June 18th, 2012
1,167 posts
14.6 Years
I'm learning japanese myself by watching japanese anime with subtitles. It's been very useful and now I can understand half of what they're saying even without subs. My greatest achievement is being able to count to nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine. ^^
Here are the words I've learned so far:

Konnochiwa: Hello
Moshi Moshi: Hello on the telephone
Sayonara: Good-bye
Arigatou: Thank you
Arigatou Gozaimasu: Thank you very much
Ohaiyo: Morning
Ohaiyo Gozaimasu: Good Morning
Nani: What
Nande: Why
Nani Kore: What is that
Ichigo: Strawberry
Ichigo Kara: Strawberry patterned
Boku: I for boys
Watashi: I for girls
Boku wa: I'm/My for boys
Watashi wa: I'm/My for girls
Houndou(ni): Really
Matte: Wait
Chotto Matte: Wait a minute
Chotto Matte Kurasai: Please wait a moment
Sakura: Cherry Blossom
Hono: Fire
Mizu: Water
Kono(ha): Leaf
Suna: Sand
(Ga)Kure: Village
Bi: Tail
Hai: Yes/Yes sir
Ye: No/Not at all/No need
Domo: Not at all
Tori: Bird
Saru: Monkey
Tora: Tiger
Koba: Small
Yashi: Woods
Kage: Shadow
Yami: Darkness
Kokoro: Heart
Itami: Pain
Hodoki: Untie
Saite: Release
Yama: Mountain
Otou-san/sama: Father
Okaa-chan/sama: Mother
Onii-san/sama/ Nii-san/sama: Big brother
Bunshin: Clone
Henge: Transform
Yume: Dream
Neko: Cat
Hana: Flower
Hara: Lotus
Haku: Ice (I think)
Shiro/Shira: White
Kuro/Kura: Black
Wa Dai Suki: I like
Je Nai Te: Isn't
Kawaii: Cute
Baka: Stupid/Idiot
Aho: Moron
Shine: Die
Tsuki: Moon
Aka: Red
Teme(noka): You bastard(s)
Ksau(I don't know how to type it): Damn
Anata: You
Nian: Year
Mai: Ago
Oy: Hey
Sasejin Jiken(or something like that): Murder case
Metantei: Detective
Kevu/Keji: Inspector
Hikare: Light/Glowing/Bright

Then there are the numbers:
Ichi: One
Ni: Two
San: Three
Yon/Shi: Four
Go: Five
Roku: Six
Nana: Seven
Hachi: Eight
Kyuu/Kuu: Nine
Juu: Ten

A = ah I = ey O = oh U = ooh E = eh

Hope this helps.